6 ms·

The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcom

The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.

aaomidi 6mo ago
Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.
- reassess_blind 6mo ago
  Not to mention there are more students.
  - mistrial9 6mo ago
    in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled. -- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students. The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD. Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%. The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures. Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%). English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.
    - reassess_blind 6mo ago
      That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?
      - MLR 6mo ago
        From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true. Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
  > vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director. 34 administrative hires. One per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
  - aiiane 6mo ago
    Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?
    - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
      > Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff? Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athletics person, who should just be one of the physical education teachers. That's about ten people, or a million dollars–minimum–in annual savings.
      - aiiane 6mo ago
        Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark. Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles. You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?
- gruez 6mo ago
  >The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.
  - mertd 6mo ago
    What I observe as a parent; 95% of the teacher's job cannot be scaled with technology.
  - nyc_data_geek1 6mo ago
    This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before. Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time? There is a lot of research out there showing worse educational outcomes as class sizes increase. This is one of the areas where wealth disparities in education manifest; rich areas tend to have smaller class sizes, and historically the very rich would pay for private tutors for their kids, whereas poor kids are stuck with bigger class sizes, less individual attention from educators, and typically average worse educational outcomes.
    - gruez 6mo ago
      >This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before. There's plenty of drudge work teachers do that's not "fostering the development of inquisitive minds". Grading papers, preparing lesson plans, etc. I don't see why not at least some of that can be offloaded to AI.
      - nradov 6mo ago
        There is already a robust online market for lesson plans, both free and paid.
lostlogin 6mo ago
It turns out that our kids learn better from humans than machines. Ever dealt with a kid who has had too much screen time? It’s fucking awful.
- apparent 6mo ago
  True, a kid who has had too much screen time is not good, just like a kid who has had too much lunch is not good. That doesn't make lunch bad, it just means the kid needs the right amount. Screens can be helpful for kids (mine have learned a ton from Khan Academy and other online tools), but kids will have different thresholds. Some will only be able to learn a little from screens because they can't work independently. Others can learn a lot. Blanket statements like "kids lean better from humans than machines" are not helpful. They obscure the fact that there is typically one teacher for 25 kids, whereas there might be 25 screens. Even if a screen is only 1/10 as good as a teacher, it could be that learning from a screen is better than learning from a teacher (who is busy with your classmates almost all of the time). My kid learned more math when she was doing AoPS for 2 yrs than when she was in class listening to lectures she already knew, followed by worksheets she had already mastered. Machines enable much more differentiation.
  - datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
    Your anecdata has a gigantic blind spot of you being a capable and engaged parent that monitors and guides your children’s screen time to be educationally productive. That time is a luxury, and your expertise is rare. To take it back to the lunch analogy that you provided, it’s a bit like saying, “I don’t know why everyone’s kids are hungry at school, I pack a nutritious and filling lunch that I know my kids enjoy every morning.”
    - apparent 6mo ago
      Logically speaking, this is incorrect. OP said that humans teach kids better than machines, full stop. To disprove this claim, I do not need to show that all kids learn better from machines, just that some do. I have shown this, and even admitted that it doesn't work for all kids. Also, I didn't need to monitor/guide my kids so they could learn from AoPS or Khan Academy. Those platforms are self-guided. But regardless, my kid learned pretty much zero from school math, so the threshold for "better than the teacher" was very very low.
AngryData 6mo ago
It shouldn't be surprising when you see what the educational technology money is actually spent on. Ive seen like a dozen "smart boards" purchased by my schools from the 00's and never once seen one used. Or how about the completely dog shit computer testing software that fails one-two word answers based on random capitalization or punctuation with no indication on what they expect. Each thing sold as the solution to all the past problems, but introducing more problems itself without actually solving any old ones.
estearum 6mo ago
in this thread: people discover Baumol's cost disease
deathlight 6mo ago
Technology needs to form a union if it wants to fight existing union structures.
datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
Isn’t this just Baumol’s cost disease? Gains in efficiency due to technology improvement, as far as I know, are always attributable to fewer people being able to do more / produce more. There are some things that will never have gains in efficiency. Technology will not reduce the number of players on a football field from 11 to 10.
- skoskie 6mo ago
  I've always heard it called the Pregnancy Principle – or maybe it's just a corollary. "Nine women cannot do in one month what one woman can do in nine months".

The education system seems one of the only places where vastly improving technology over the past 30 years has not translated to cost savings or improved outcomes.

aaomidi 6mo ago

Why would we expect schooling to get…cheaper? The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing.

reassess_blind 6mo ago
Not to mention there are more students.
- mistrial9 6mo ago
  in California there are not more students.. all tiers of schools show falling enrollments, year after year. Except community colleges, where they have discovered that more than 15% of all students are ghost enrolled. -- California K-12 public school enrollment fell by 74,961 students (a 1.3% decline) for the 2025-26 school year, marking the largest drop since the pandemic. This loss was significantly higher than the state’s Department of Finance projection of only 10,000 students. The decline is driven by lower birth rates and a reduction in immigration, with the latter exacerbated by families fearing enforcement actions. Los Angeles County accounted for nearly half of the state's total loss, losing 32,953 students, largely due to a decrease in newcomer students within the LAUSD. Private schools saw a steeper drop of 6.6%, while homeschooling declined by 3.7%. The enrollment drop is causing budget deficits, leading to staff layoffs, program cuts, and potential school closures. Hispanic students experienced the largest numeric loss (48,064), while white students saw the largest percentage decline (2.68%). English learner enrollment fell by 8.2%, partly due to reclassification and partly due to out-migration.
  - reassess_blind 6mo ago
    That's surprising. Surely there are still more than there were 30 years ago?
    - MLR 6mo ago
      From glancing at the numbers it looks pretty similar, but there's been a huge drop in births in California in the last 10-20 years so it's probably the last few years where that will be true. Peak birth year was 1990 after booming through the 80s, births started falling off a cliff after 2008 and last year there were about the same number of births as in 1980 despite the population increasing by 80%.
JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
> vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers My 1,500-student public California high school currently lists 7 administration-team members (principal, executive assistant, three assistant principals, school-facilities manager and food-services manager) and 11 administrative-support members (school data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior-clerical assistant, separate registrar and attendance roles, interventions-support specialist, and others). That doesn't include 4 site maintenance, a network-support and a separate network-systems specialists; a separate media-library specialist; 2 psychologists; a college and career advisor; 4 school counselors; a wellness-space support specialist; and a social science and an athletic director. 34 administrative hires. One per 44 students. Many of those roles strike me as fluff.
- aiiane 6mo ago
  Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff?
  - JumpCrisscross 6mo ago
    > Which of those roles specifically would you say are fluff? Food-services manager (it's all oursourced to Aramark), data-processing specialist, print-center technician, senior clerical assistant, one of registrar or attendance, two of site maintenance, one of the network specialists (probably both–one across the district is plenty), and probably at least one of the counselors and the separate social science & athletics person, who should just be one of the physical education teachers. That's about ten people, or a million dollars–minimum–in annual savings.
    - aiiane 6mo ago
      Someone still has to coordinate with Aramark. Data-processing specialist and print-center technician both sound like fancy names for secretarial roles. You're honestly saying schools need fewer counselors in what has been generally regarded as the worst generation for child mental health in years?
gruez 6mo ago
>The vast majority of the cost is hiring teachers. It should be staying in line with inflation or even increasing. Only if you assume if per-teacher productivity can't increase.
- mertd 6mo ago
  What I observe as a parent; 95% of the teacher's job cannot be scaled with technology.
- nyc_data_geek1 6mo ago
  This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before. Why would better tools be expected to do enable teachers to do that for more students at a time? There is a lot of research out there showing worse educational outcomes as class sizes increase. This is one of the areas where wealth disparities in education manifest; rich areas tend to have smaller class sizes, and historically the very rich would pay for private tutors for their kids, whereas poor kids are stuck with bigger class sizes, less individual attention from educators, and typically average worse educational outcomes.
  - gruez 6mo ago
    >This is not creating widgets or lines of code, not creating a product for consumption, this is fostering the development of inquisitive minds, hopefully encouraging them to become critical thinkers and ultimately the next generation of leaders who will push the bounds of human knowledge further than ever before. There's plenty of drudge work teachers do that's not "fostering the development of inquisitive minds". Grading papers, preparing lesson plans, etc. I don't see why not at least some of that can be offloaded to AI.
    - nradov 6mo ago
      There is already a robust online market for lesson plans, both free and paid.

lostlogin 6mo ago

It turns out that our kids learn better from humans than machines. Ever dealt with a kid who has had too much screen time? It’s fucking awful.

apparent 6mo ago
True, a kid who has had too much screen time is not good, just like a kid who has had too much lunch is not good. That doesn't make lunch bad, it just means the kid needs the right amount. Screens can be helpful for kids (mine have learned a ton from Khan Academy and other online tools), but kids will have different thresholds. Some will only be able to learn a little from screens because they can't work independently. Others can learn a lot. Blanket statements like "kids lean better from humans than machines" are not helpful. They obscure the fact that there is typically one teacher for 25 kids, whereas there might be 25 screens. Even if a screen is only 1/10 as good as a teacher, it could be that learning from a screen is better than learning from a teacher (who is busy with your classmates almost all of the time). My kid learned more math when she was doing AoPS for 2 yrs than when she was in class listening to lectures she already knew, followed by worksheets she had already mastered. Machines enable much more differentiation.
- datsci_est_2015 6mo ago
  Your anecdata has a gigantic blind spot of you being a capable and engaged parent that monitors and guides your children’s screen time to be educationally productive. That time is a luxury, and your expertise is rare. To take it back to the lunch analogy that you provided, it’s a bit like saying, “I don’t know why everyone’s kids are hungry at school, I pack a nutritious and filling lunch that I know my kids enjoy every morning.”
  - apparent 6mo ago
    Logically speaking, this is incorrect. OP said that humans teach kids better than machines, full stop. To disprove this claim, I do not need to show that all kids learn better from machines, just that some do. I have shown this, and even admitted that it doesn't work for all kids. Also, I didn't need to monitor/guide my kids so they could learn from AoPS or Khan Academy. Those platforms are self-guided. But regardless, my kid learned pretty much zero from school math, so the threshold for "better than the teacher" was very very low.

AngryData 6mo ago

It shouldn't be surprising when you see what the educational technology money is actually spent on. Ive seen like a dozen "smart boards" purchased by my schools from the 00's and never once seen one used. Or how about the completely dog shit computer testing software that fails one-two word answers based on random capitalization or punctuation with no indication on what they expect. Each thing sold as the solution to all the past problems, but introducing more problems itself without actually solving any old ones.

estearum 6mo ago

in this thread: people discover Baumol's cost disease

deathlight 6mo ago

Technology needs to form a union if it wants to fight existing union structures.

datsci_est_2015 6mo ago

Isn’t this just Baumol’s cost disease? Gains in efficiency due to technology improvement, as far as I know, are always attributable to fewer people being able to do more / produce more. There are some things that will never have gains in efficiency. Technology will not reduce the number of players on a football field from 11 to 10.

skoskie 6mo ago
I've always heard it called the Pregnancy Principle – or maybe it's just a corollary. "Nine women cannot do in one month what one woman can do in nine months".